The Dark Coast
Jericoacoara, Brazil
After leaving Venezuela, we made our way to Northeast Brazil, far out on the tip of South America, where we were actually closer to Africa than Central America. It is a very remote area, and we took a regular bus followed by a dune buggy the last 20 km to a small fishing village called Jericoacoara. The last part of the journey was a drive along the sandy beach since there are no regular roads to the village. It´s an amazing place, an oasis of palm trees and greenery surrounded by hundreds of miles of golden sand dunes. It´s hard to describe the beauty of walking out on the vast dune field under the blue half light of the moon after taking sunset photos. The rolling dunes spread out to the horizon on one side while the ocean waves crash in a regular rhythm on the other. The tide fluctuation is huge and you can walk out about a mile on the wet sand at low tide. Low tide was at night, and we made a routine of walking far out on the flats by moonlight. The cool light of the moon made the distant dunes loom larger than life, and they were reflected perfectly onto the glassy plain of wet sand surrounding us. The horizon seemed to merge together and you got this extraordinary sense that you were walking through the star filled empty sky. The bathing warmth of the evening sea breeze added to otherworldly feel of the place. We met a few really cool locals there and had some interesting conversations about Brazil. We also imbibed in the local mojitos and capirinas from street stalls on the sandy streets. There was a good mix of rustic posada restaurants with surprisingly good pizza and Brazilian reggae music at night. We walked barefoot everywhere and felt very safe there (unlike other parts of Brazil). It was a very special place and we spent a few more days there than we originally planned. Photo © copyright by Michael Anderson.